US sanctions prevented Ukrainian use of Starlink – Musk

The SpaceX CEO said his company was not allowed to provide coverage in the area due to US sanctions against Russia

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed that his company refused to enable Starlink coverage over Crimea so as not to run afoul of US-imposed regulations. The billionaire came under fire last week after CNN reported that Musk’s refusal to turn on Starlink signal over the Russian peninsula had thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack against the Russian Black Sea Fleet last year.

Appearing via video link at the All-In Summit 2023 tech conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Musk was asked why he had made that decision. The SpaceX CEO started off by stressing that his company has “provided Starlink connectivity to Ukraine” since the start of the military conflict with Russia in February 2022. He added that top Ukrainian officials have acknowledged on multiple occasions that the service has played a crucial role in fending off Moscow’s offensive.

Moving on to the question about Crimea, Musk explained that “at the time this happened, the region around Crimea was actually turned off.”

“Now, the reason it was turned off was actually because… the United States has sanctions against Russia… and that includes Crimea,” he continued.

According to the billionaire, “we are not actually allowed to turn on connectivity to… the country without explicit [US] government approval.”

Musk pointed out that even though he is not a supporter of President Joe Biden, “if I [had] received a presidential directive to turn it on, I would have done so,” adding that “no such request came through.”

The entrepreneur claimed that the planned Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet in Sevastopol would have been similar in impact to the Japanese attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor during World War Two, potentially leading to a major escalation.

“So, [the Ukrainians] really asked us to really proactively take part in a major act of war,” Musk concluded.

On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called on Congress to investigate Musk over the episode, while a Ukrainian presidential aide accused the SpaceX CEO of “committing evil.”

https://www.rt.com/news/582910-musk-starlink-crimea-ukraine-us-sanctions/

‘Alien corpses’ presented in Mexican Congress

The discovery could “rewrite history,” a controversial researcher told officials

Two supposedly “non-human” mummified alien corpses were displayed to lawmakers in Mexico City on Wednesday by a self-proclaimed UFO expert, who said analysis of the specimens had shown them to not be part of humanity’s “terrestrial evolution.”

The two diminutive humanoid bodies, which have three-fingered hands and appear to have stereoscopic vision, were discovered in algae mines in Peru, journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan said as part of the presentation. He added under oath his belief that the corpses, which were carbon-dated as being around 1,000 years old, are not of terrestrial origin.

“These specimens are not part of our terrestrial evolution,” Maussan said at the public hearing. “These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage. They were found in [algae] mines, and were later fossilized.”

He added: “Whether they are aliens or not, we don’t know, but they were intelligent and they lived with us. They should rewrite history.”

Maussan’s latest findings are unproven, and his previous UFO claims have been debunked.

The journalist said at the presentation that scientists from the Autonomous National University of Mexico were successful in their attempts to retrieve DNA evidence from the specimens using radiocarbon dating methods. The analysis determined that around 30% of the DNA was of “unknown” origin, he claimed.

X-ray scans of the two specimens were also presented to officials, showing that one of the bodies appeared to have ‘eggs’ inside it, which supposedly contain embryos. Both bodies had also been implanted with extremely rare metals, including osmium – one of the most scarce elements in the Earth’s crust.

https://www.rt.com/news/582908-mexico-congress-alien-evidence/

US frets over ‘deepfake’ threats to national security

Federal security agencies have warned that AI-generated imagery will increasingly be used in cyberattacks

The US National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI have issued a threat alert over “deepfake” technology that could potentially be used to help breach computer systems in the military and other sensitive targets.

Hackers can use computer-generated imagery to hijack brands, impersonate organization leaders and gain access to sensitive data, the federal agencies said on Tuesday in a cybersecurity advisory. While such tactics have been employed in the past, advances in artificial intelligence have made it easier and less expensive to create deepfake images.

“The tools and techniques for manipulating authentic multimedia are not new, but the ease and scale with which cyber actors are using these techniques are,” NSA mathematician Candice Rockwell Gerstner said in a statement. “Organizations and their employees need to learn to recognize deepfake tradecraft and techniques and have a plan in place to respond and minimize impact if they come under attack.”

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also contributed to Tuesday’s advisory. The agencies warned that deepfake attacks could present challenges for security agencies, the Pentagon and defense contractors. The agencies recommended that organizations deploy technologies that can detect deepfakes and trace the origin of multimedia files.

“In addition to undermining brands and finances, synthetic media can also cause public unrest through the spread of false information about political, social, military or economic issues,” the advisory said.

Those concerns will take on heightened significance as the 2024 US election approaches and congressional Republicans advance their impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. Touting the deepfake threat also could create a pretext for questioning the validity of authentic multimedia files.

During the 2020 election cycle, the FBI set the stage for social media censorship of a bombshell report on alleged influence-peddling by the Biden family – as evidenced by files on a laptop that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had abandoned at a repair shop.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said last year that his platform throttled back sharing of the Biden story because the FBI had warned the company that law enforcement expected a major “dump” of Russian disinformation just before the election. A group of former US intelligence officials cited that warning after the laptop story broke, falsely claiming it had the “hallmarks” of Russian disinformation to benefit Biden's campaign.

https://www.rt.com/news/582871-nsa-fbi-cisa-deepfake-threat/

Huawei’s sneak attack tears a hole in US sanctions on China

The telecom giant’s new Mate 60 phone is a sign Washington’s chip tech restrictions are not working

Recently, Huawei’s Mate 60 smartphone rolled out to great acclaim with no advertising campaign or advance notice. On August 30, Reuters reported that China’s chip companies’ stocks rallied due to the surprise drop of the phone and speculation that it may be using locally-sourced semiconductors.

The company, however, has not commented on its technical specifications. It did not specify whether the phone is 5G enabled, though users have confirmed that it is. It merely stated that it had made breakthroughs in satellite communications, which has also been demonstrated. But the major question is about the phone’s chipsets. With a sweeping US sanctions campaign having cut off China’s access to foreign-made chip technology, the US government said it would be looking into the key question: How did China pull this off?

The South China Morning Post, for instance, has grappled with Huawei’s hush-up over the phone’s obviously powerful chipset. One theory is that China’s domestic Semiconductor International Manufacturing Corp (SMIC), which declined to comment, provided the tech. All things being equal, this seems to be the most likely case and a Bloomberg teardown appears to confirm this.

Chinese benchmarking website AnTuTu conducted tests that suggest the central processing unit (CPU) of the Mate 60 could be the domestically-produced Kirin 9000, which “would mark a ‘breakthrough’ for China’s semiconductor industry and a major win for Huawei’s chip smartphone business.”

This appears to be backed up by a Nikkei Asia report from July on Huawei’s re-entry into the 5G phone market, saying that SMIC would be making a seven-nanometer chip for Huawei. This is two generations behind the cutting edge – Apple is about to roll out a new iPhone based on 3nm chips – but still much better than what China should theoretically have access to under American sanctions. Washington’s restrictions on technology access have aimed to arrest Beijing’s chip industry at 14nm levels, or about eight years behind the latest advances.

Another possibility is that Huawei produced the chip with its own supply chain network. A report by Bloomberg, citing the Semiconductor Industry Association, speculates that the telecom firm has been building an independent supply chain network in secret to skirt US export controls by recruiting existing foundries. This would mean that Huawei has finally become independent and beaten US sanctions.

The Mate 60 dropped in the middle of a visit to China by US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, whose office oversees the implementation of the related sanctions on Beijing’s high-tech industries. The timing of these events would be a major substantive – as well as symbolic – blow to the US, which is trying to unilaterally stifle China’s global competitiveness in sensitive fields. China’s Global Times newspaper picked up on the sentiment of Chinese netizens of “rising up under US pressure.”

Finally, it could be the case that the new phone uses existing inventory from before the US-imposed restrictions, such as chips manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) before September 2020. According to reports, Huawei had been stockpiling chips before the controls came into place and might now be repackaging them with some modifications. If true, this would imply Huawei is still being kept under the thumb of US sanctions. But this is the least likely explanation.

The most likely explanation appears to be that China has either developed the tech to produce advanced chips domestically or found ways to build a supply chain bypassing American sanctions – and either one of them shows a tremendous victory for China’s telecom industry in the face of unfair pressure from the US. In either case, Washington insiders are scared. Just look at the Washington Post’s latest story that the Mate 60 “sparks worry China has found a way around US tech limits,” which quotes American experts as saying that China is still “in the game” when it comes to delivering quality 5G-capable products.

https://www.rt.com/news/582846-huawei-us-sanctions-china/

China demands Ukraine explain ‘low intellectual potential’ slur

President Zelensky’s top aide has suggested that Beijing and New Delhi are unable to analyze the consequences of their moves

Beijing has demanded clarification from Kiev after Mikhail Podoliak, the top aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, suggested that authorities in China and India weren’t smart enough to figure out what the actual national interests of their countries were.

Podoliak characterized the two Asian powerhouses as having “low intellectual potential,” in an interview with channel Vlast vs Vaschenko published Tuesday on YouTube. Speaking about the increasing cooperation of Beijing and New Delhi with Moscow amid the conflict in Ukraine, he claimed that China and India “don’t analyze the consequences of the steps they make.”

The aide accused China, India and also Türkiye of “earning money” on the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Chinese authorities believe that doing so is in their country’s national interests, but Beijing is better off distancing itself from Russia as it’s “an archaic nation that drags China into unnecessary conflicts,” he said.

When asked to comment on the statements by Podoliak during a briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said: “I don’t know the background of this person’s remarks, but he should clarify them.”

Mao reminded reporters that Beijing has always maintained a “responsible” stance towards the conflict in Ukraine, constantly calling for a cessation of hostilities and a political settlement to the crisis.

Later on Wednesday Podoliak took to X (formerly Twitter) to explain what he meant by questioning China’s and India’s intellectual abilities. He claimed that his comments were taken out of context by the Russian media.

According to Podoliak, China, India and Türkiye are “clearly justified” in claiming important roles on the international stage, but “the global world is much broader than even the most thoughtful regional national interests.”

Moscow, with which Ankara, New Delhi and Beijing maintain ties, is “demonstratively trying to undermine the foundations of the global world,” he explained.

https://www.rt.com/news/582904-china-india-ukraine-podoliak/

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